Monday, August 18, 2014

Raspberry Pi Picture Frame Post 11 Progress Update

Now that I am finally back in Indiana I have got the picture frame setup and it is working like a charm. That is once I got it connected to the internet again. Today I gave out the information so that my siblings could start uploading pictures to the frame so that I can give it a good test. just over 4 months till Christmas when I need this thing working perfectly.

Things I have changed since my last post.

Added picture re sizing. I was putting the files as the came off my camera directly onto the picture frame. These files were about 3mb. I setup the picture frame to resize the images down to the make resolution of the screen. That way the files are smaller and more will fit on the memory card. They are about 1/5th the size they were originally. (will write up how I did this later once I figure out how I did it.

Moved picture locations. Instead of having the pictures in the main google drive folder. I moved them to a folder called pictures. This allowed me to share that folder with edit capabilities with other family members so that they to could add pictures without me having to give them my username and password.

Things to be done

Build the nice wooden frame. Luckily I have access to a nice wood shop out here which will make my life much easier.

Add a external light so you can tell when the screen power is on and off. Now you may be wondering why I want to do that since the screen will be showing pictures when it is on. Simple. When you use the remote to turn the screen on you don't know if its powering on unless you wait since there is about a 5 second delay for power on

Add a gpio input for screen power. This way we can schedule events to turn the screen on and off. Without this if the screen is already off and the off event comes it will just turn the on which is the opposite of what we want.

Change weather screen 2. I said this in a previous post but I plan on changing the second weather screen to show the weather in 4 different locations.